If you read the table, it is a table of Rivals rankings, while Mandel manifestly is pulling information from all the major services, particularly Scout. The table isn't his fault.

Not even sure what you're arguing re: 2006. Yes, Henne, Hart and long were key parts of that team; As it happens, the 2004 and 2005 classes were important contributors to the talent on that team. They were not freshmen. Aren't you agreeing with him? Shouldn't you?

Regarding that one BCS bowl: This is Michigan, most of us think we should go to BCS bowl games more than once every five or six years. And he links that problem to recruiting. Why does he need to mention that there were two 20+ classes prior to the bowl? What relevance does that have? Mike Martin, Ryan Van Bergen, and Junior Hemingway were not a part of those classes, and they were three of the most important people on that team.

Why does it matter that Ohio State had one class that ranked 25th? What does it have to do with the story? When you write at a professional level, you aren't supposed to cram every bit of information available on a topic into a paper and hope it fits; you are supposed to write about a story and address information only as it pertains the focus of the topic. OSU's one bad class is irrelevant--for most of the 00s they hammered us in recruiting, and now that Urban is there they are recruiting very well. Mandel's point? Michigan's right there with them.

Mandel is a writer. You are a critic. And you went to the article looking for things to hate, rather than actually digesting what was said. If the word idiot applies anywhere, it is not to Mandel for this article.

Not to be overly-thankful for someone doing the right thing, but I suspect many sportswriters would have lifted this blog's analysis without accrediting the source. Also lets us know that Mandel or someone working for him reviews this and other blogs - a credit to MGoBlog and the blogosphere in general.

"Michigan's the interesting one," said Rivals.com national analyst Mike Farrell. "You look at what Ohio State's doing, they got a quarterback [J.T. Barrett] from Texas, a [linebacker] from Georgia [Trey Johnson], they're still dipping down South. Michigan's class, except for the defensive back from North Carolina [Channing Stribling], there's no Southern representation in this class at all. "How's that going to play out? Will they still not be fast enough to compete with SEC teams? We'll see."

Us damned northerners and our inferior DNA which produces little to no fast twitch musculature. The only reason that southerners may be faster is they can't count high enough to measure out 40 yards.

On a serious note there is a flip side to the "Ohio recruiting nationally" angle that they fail to mention. Once Urban stopped looking first at the Ohio kids the way Tressel did he opened the door to Michigan to move back in. Tressel's philosophy of Ohio first, last and always may not have gotten OSU as many kids from the south but it did effectively wall us off from recruiting here. Now that the approach has changed the HS coaches have opened doors to us that were closed down here for many years.

Actually, It's almost entirely DNA that explains the dominance of East Africans in distance running events (just as it is for West Africans in sprinting).

East Africa is mountainous, but so are many other parts of the world. You don't see world-class distance runners coming from the Andes, Alps, Himalaya, etc. East Africans happen to have a greater proportion of slow-twitch muscle fibers in their legs.

Well they could turn into elite pass rushers, but neither came out of HS with an elite pass rusher pedigree. Ohio snagged Noah Spence who was a concensus top-10 across all four recruiting sites. That is an elite pedigree. You could put a possibly in front of anybody on the roster, but that doesn't mean it will be likely. If Taco and/or Mario develop into elite pass rushers, then they will have greatly outperformed their expectations.

You are correct about Ohio and their D-Line recruiting being very good. Pipkins and Poggi are gifted, and will help Michigan on the d-line. However, there are two recruits out there in the 2014 class who would push Michigan to elite status: Da'Shawn Hand and Malik McDowell. Hand is not only the top ranked strongside defensive end, he is the consensus number 1 2014 player in the nation, regardless of position. Getting Hand would be like getting Jadeveon Clowney. However, I'll be surprised if we can pull him out of the south . . . I think he goes to Alabama or Virginia Tech, or possibly South Carolina. McDowell is also very good. Because he is in Michigan, at Cass Tech, he is really almost more important than Hand. It would not be good to lose him to another program, especially Ohio.

Corners can still improve. We're not yet elite, and have work to do.

Same with Wide Receivers. And while we've had some good ones in the past, I'm not sure I'd call Michigan WR U. We have a ways to go there.

I think we're fairly healthy elsewhere. One more year of solid recruiting on the O-Line will get depth and experience to where it needs to be. We definitely need to get back into the pattern of a QB in every class.

"How's that going to play out? Will they still not be fast enough to compete with SEC teams? We'll see."

It's not that teams and players up north aren't fast enough, Michigan was simply not talented enough up front to play with Alabama. Notre Dame was lacking talent on the offensive line and defensive backfield to keep up with Alabama. It had nothing to do with speed and everything to do with talent

The thing is, speed is roughly analagous to talent. When Michigan is "slow," it's not because they are trying to grow slow-moving man-mountain neanderthals that have no speed, it's because they are low on talent, period. When Michigan has talent, they have speed--but nobody ever mentions that. In the 1/1/08 Cap One Bowl, Michigan had speed everywhere on the field because they had TALENT everywhere on the field and seriously outplayed a Florida team that was between national championship seasons (that is, lots of talent there).

When Michigan played Bama they got punched in the mouth because neither line was very good and both of Bama's lines were excellent. Sure, Michigan wasn't threatening Alabama on the edges when on offense (neither did anyone else) but that's not because Michigan was fielding slow five-stars. It was because their best athletes, apart from ultra-fast Denard, were low-talent guys. We weren't even starting our #1 RB, and the guy who would have been the top receiver in a low-end group (Stonum) was off the team.

The most recent defining example of "fast" vs "slow" is that OSU-Florida BCS championship where OSU got annihilated. Supposedly because they were slow. Well, it's true that their fastest offensive player got hurt after running a kick back for a touchdown (he ran it slow--if he had been faster he wouldn't have gotten hurt!). And it's true that their offensive line was porous. But it's not like Florida was that much of an upgrade over Michigan in NFL talent that year; Lamar Woodley, David Harris, and Leon Hall among others were all fast enough to become defensive mainstays in the NFL. But don't call that Michigan team "fast."

"Speed" is an excuse for the weak-minded. Talented players have a strong tendency to be fast; talented teams are fast teams, under-talented teams are not as fast.

The mention by SI.com (as well as the ESPN one noted above) are simply more evidence that MGoBlog really is a primary go-to site nationally for comprehensive information and analysis regarding University Of Michigan athletics, and that is something the entire community here can be proud of really.

As for the article itself, this quote struck me:

"They do a great job recruiting in the offseason -- identifying kids early, making offers early, and that definitely pays off," said Helmholdt. "They feel very confident in their evaluations of kids."

In addition to the relationships, the forward planning aspect that Hoke and the staff involve as part of their process is one of the things that make me feel confident we're looking at some excellent times ahead for the program. They are always keeping an eye to the future and to their anticipated needs and making early evaluations and contact does ensure at least some relative continuity in terms of the overall level of talent as well as where it comes from. Strangely enough, there are companies in the Fortune 500 that do not workforce plan with this level of foresight.

A very good article - a couple more years of good recruiting and it should be a two horse race again. One point the article made is that Hoke is not recruiting much in the south. I hope he starts looking down there for some of our recruits. We didn't do too badly with some kid from Florida who had a little bit of speed.

Mike Valenti dared callers yesterday when he said Michigan is not elite like OSU! He said no recruiting service has Michigan #1, and then he rattled off Rivals, 247 and ESPN. Me thinks he cherry picked his recruiting services...or he was just being a dingbat...or both.

Sometimes I wish there was an intelligent Michigan caller on that station that also yells back at him whenever he goes off on one of his Bill O'Reilly-type bullying tirades. I'd do it, if I actually listened to the show in more than bits and pieces (because that is all I can stomach until the WTKA goes live again).

He cherry picked his information!? Well I never would have thought that! And even with Rivals, 247, and ESPN, how can he make his point? Rivals has us #6 and like 20 points behind Ohio at #4. Looks pretty similar to me. 247 has UM at 7 and Ohio at 5. 247 composite has UM at 4 and Ohio at 2 (and it should be noted that Ohio has no 5 stars on the composite). ESPN has UM at 5 and Ohio at 4. Where in any of the even cherry picked data does it say UM isn't elite. If Ohio is elite by these measures, then so is UM. He's just crying for help, trying to grasp onto any little straw that might suggest that his hated rival is doing anyting but leaving his team in the dust. It's quite pathetic. And he'll never debate a level headed UM on air because they screen all the callers and he cherry picks for MSU trolls saying they're UM fans.

IMO opinion, if we are going to compete for a title. The Dline play needs to improve and we need a true shut down corner. It's not rocket science. But in the next class a lockdown DB would be very nice.

Yes, HS football in SEC territory has more overall speed than the Great Lakes. Yes, the core states (FL, AL, GA, LA, MS, SC) have more depth of talent than the Great Lakes.

But ...UM only needs to find a small group (15 or so a year) of players with foot speed to compete. Cherry pick a few top CBs or WRs or RBs from anywhere and UM has the same speed AND powerful lineman.

The only downside to Hoke's tremendous job at turning down recruiting is that I had hoped he would keep the pipeline to Florida that Rodriguez established. Yes, Hoke is a much better recruiter overall, but I would love to see Michigan dip into the south.